Analytics is the foundation of every dental digital marketing strategy. Harnessing data-driven insights can help you make informed decisions leading to the growth of your dental practice.
Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google Analytics built to replace Universal Analytics (UA) after July 1, 2023. Essentially, it’s meant to alleviate the privacy concerns raised regarding UA’s violation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Along with enhanced privacy, as a dental practice owner, you can expect improved insights, new report functions, and loads of other unique features in GA4.
Why is Google Analytics 4 important for dental marketing?
Google Analytics 4 is a “modern measurement solution” in the web analytics sphere, according to Google. It enables you to track the complex, multi-platform journeys of your site or app users while upholding their privacy.
For your dental practice, this opens up a whole new world of more profound insights into user data from your practice group, all in one place. For instance, not only would you be able to track traffic to your dental practice website, but you could analyze significant user behavior metrics as well.
So whether you want to generate leads or increase your app installs, GA4 can help your dental practice meet it’s evolving needs as well as your patients’ expectations.
5 benefits of GA4 for your dental practice
1. Cross-device tracking and cross-channel attribution
In the healthcare sector, as in other industries, the customer journey is generally spread out across different devices.
Thanks to Google Signals, Google Analytics 4 is set up for cross-device tracking and reporting, making it easier to track the performance of your dental marketing tactics.
More specifically, the tool can identify users across different devices, once they’re signed in to their Google accounts. This means more data and a better understanding of how users interact with your practice group across multiple devices and sessions.
For example, let’s say most of your patients book appointments on their smartphones but prefer searching for information on their desktops.
At the same time, GA4 uses attribution models based on an algorithm that determines which marketing touchpoints are responsible for driving conversions. For instance, a patient might visit your dental practice group through Google’s organic search, a social media ad, and a Google Ad, before booking an appointment with you. If you use the ‘Cross-channel last click model’ here, it will give full conversion credit to the last touchpoint on the conversion path, that is, the Google Ad.
These insights can help you develop more effective marketing and communication strategies, such as ensuring your appointment forms are mobile-responsive. In turn, this helps you deliver better patient experiences.
2. Enhanced measurements based on events
Google Analytics 4 can now automatically measure interactions with your website and its content. When you connect your practice group to GA4 using the Data Streams option, your property starts measuring events.
Such events may include scrolls, file downloads, website searches, and video engagements. This means you can track much more, without any help required from developers.
3. Customizable dashboard
The new dashboard in Google Analytics 4 features only four menu items on the left sidebar – ‘Home’, ‘Reports’ (to see customized insights), ‘Explore’ (to generate visual data about patients’ behavior using templates), and ‘Advertising’ (to view ad data).
Under ‘Explore’ (Explorations), you can customize the dashboard to view insights that matter the most to your dental practice. More specifically, it lets you set the segments and dimensions of your site and its users to track and view your desired metrics.
4. Improved visualizations and reporting
Simplified pre-built reports in GA4 – Realtime reports, lifecycle reports, and user reports – allow you to quickly identify data patterns.
You can also customize each report by adding up to 16 cards. Each of these cards shows data visualizations based on the metric you choose. For instance, you may choose to see data on users by country, city, language, age, or gender.
Additionally, the platform enables you to customize your reports snapshot to view the most critical data at a glance.
5. More user privacy
Protecting patients’ privacy is paramount in the healthcare sector, and rightfully so. Thankfully, Google Analytics 4 respects patients’ preferences about how they want their data handled. If they choose not to share parts or any of their data with your practice website or app, GA4 can still paint an overall picture of their user journey, using the data they’ve agreed to share.
GA4 also comes with an in-built IP anonymity feature, unlike its predecessor (UA). Universal Analytics is used to give you the option to anonymize a patient’s IP address. But with GA4, that option no longer exists – individual patients’ IP addresses are not logged on the platform. Instead, it discards the IP addresses and preserves the location data, so you can see where your patients are searching for you from.
Wrapping it up
Evidently, Google Analytics 4 is a potent analytics tool providing valuable insights into your practice group visitors. The sooner you start using it, the faster you can familiarize yourself with its layout and how it works.
If you want to hold on to necessary historical data from your dental practice site, don’t wait to move to GA4 till Universal Analytics stops processing hits. The migration might take time, so it’s imperative to start reaping the benefits of GA4 as soon as possible.
About the Author
Alok Sharma is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of 314e Corporation. Practifly, a 314e product suite, builds software for healthcare organizations to enhance their growth and efficiency. Practifly’s modern website CMS and digital marketing platform help medical practices and other medical organizations like yours reach more patients and create better local brand awareness. To learn how we can help you, contact us.
